What It's Like To Have TWO Vaginas (And Why It's Heartbreaking)

After struggling with severe pelvic cramps in her early twenties, Nicci Triefenbach was told by doctors that she had a duplicate reproduction system. Now 32, Triefenbach laments on her decade struggle with pain, becoming a sexual novelty to men and feeling like a "circus freak."

When speaking being a woman with two vaginas and about her condition, Triefenbach said, "The condition affected my life pretty severely. The hardest thing about the whole process is not feeling like a woman. You feel like you're insane, then there is the whole 'why me?' aspect. You feel isolated and abnormal — like a freak of nature. Trying to explain it to partners before sex was embarrassing and I felt like some men only wanted to be with me because I was a novelty — they saw having sex with me as a challenge."

To make matters even worse, Triefenbach was also diagnosed with endometriosis, which is very painful and makes it even more difficult for women to have children.

"I have had three miscarriages and it wasn't possible for me to go further than 22 weeks. You get very desperate to have children and you just wonder 'What am I doing wrong? Why am I going through this?' There were times when I thought about suicide but again with my support system it pulled me out.

I now have a normal vagina with one vaginal opening, no cervix now obviously, and no uteruses. I've always wanted to be a mum and going ahead with the hysterectomy was a difficult decision to make, but since the operation, my quality of life has gotten so much better," she said.

While the chance to have her own children is gone, Triefenbach still feels grateful that her quality of life has improved.

"I don't think I could have even coped with the physical demands of looking after a child before but now I just have so much more energy. I basically have my life back. I want to adopt one day, hopefully soon. I was adopted myself and I'd love to give a home to a child who really needs it."

After the operation, she felt a whole lot of relief as she spent much of her childhood bedridden with cramps. It wasn’t until she was twenty that a doctor found the second vagina during an exam.

Her condition, uterus didelphys, is quite rare and only affects less than one percent of women.

The condition caused her vaginal cavity to split into two sections so that she had double the cervix, wombs and vaginal openings. She even had two menstrual cycles which caused even more problems!

She developed the dangerous and potentially deadly anemia because the blood loss was too much for her body to handle.

"There was the opening, a normal labia and then it funneled up and split off into a 'Y' with two different vaginal canals. At the end of the canals, there was two little doughnut areas where the cervixes were and that divided off into two separate uterine bodies," Triefenbach explains.

Her husband says, "Nicci is really strong. I commend her for being as strong as she was getting through all this. Granted I don't have any vaginas but if I did, I don't know if I could have done the same thing. I can only imagine how hard it was for her."

The support of her husband has helped inspire Triefenbach to accept her condition and to help others suffering from the same thing.

She says, "For years I was ashamed but now I love my body for what it is capable of rather than hating it for what it's not. I want to get rid of the stigma surrounding conditions like this and I want other women to love themselves and love their bodies.

I have decided to go public with this because there are so many women out there that have anomalies and have endometriosis, and don't feel like they have anybody. You're not alone and you've got to be strong. If you are a woman with 2 vaginas, two uteruses, two cervixes, you're just different, you're not a circus freak."

Hopefully, in her attempts to help other women, she can find even more peace within herself.